Make 2024 the Year of Walking Your Talk

Stories are everywhere:

We hear stories all the time. We tell stories. We are stories. Think about your own name for example. What is the story of your name? Why did your parents name you what they did? Is there meaning in your last name? Do you have a nickname, how did you get it? We have asked thousands of people these questions and have been captivated by moving, funny, nonsensical, unforgettable stories.

Harvard Education Professor, Howard Gardner states:

“Stories (narratives, myths or fables) constitute a uniquely powerful currency in human relationships…….it is stories of identity – narratives that help individuals think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed- that constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leader’s arsenal.”

We use stories to help brand and organizations to communicate who they are and what they value.?

Fat Words

Almost all organizations spend time, energy and resources on plaques, banners, and letterhead with statements describing mission, values, and brand pillars, etc. Statements like “we value passion, integrity, and imagination. ” You could describe this as “Fat Words”: language that is so universal that it can mean something different to anyone using it. It is easy to fall into judgment about the use of “Fat Words”, but the more we kept encountering them in organizations the less judgmental we became. We started to notice that for the most part this language didn’t come out of nowhere. Words like PASSION, INTEGRITY, IMAGINATION seemed to be based on real beliefs, founder visions, and organizational philosophy. But there were some issues that arose as this language started to be used:

1. Often this language was aspirational, describing what the organization WANTED to be rather than who they were.

2. From company to company the language all sounded alike (all advertising agencies value creativity). So the language did not help differentiate the organization or brand from any other.

3. But most importantly, the language didn’t seem to help the people inside. The organization would spend an awful lot of time and resources to craft the language and then stop there.

In 2017, we worked with Swift, a world-renowned boutique agency with clients such as Google, Starbucks, and Twitter. From humble beginnings, the firm grew rapidly and became a formidable player in the digital space. It’s no surprise there were growing pains.

When the company leadership realized they needed to relaunch Swift’s values, they hired On Your Feet. We were brought in to help refresh these values through story, since the values were foundational to Swift’s culture and needed to be top-of-mind again.?

As a small but powerful example, They decided to rename “sick days” as “wellness days” to encourage employees to use the time to recharge, run errands, or just spend time with family. Swift quickly saw increased employee satisfaction and people taking more “wellness days.”

Introducing On Your Feet’s Story Plotter Framework

As we kept interacting with other organizations, different kinds stories emerged.? We worked with a professional basketball organization that wanted to bring their brand values to life throughout every level of their organization. A global advertising agency was interested in finding other ways for their clients to communicate who they are to their consumers, looking beyond brand communication and focusing on brand action. We worked with a Hollywood studio to find new actions for its character-based consumer products division.

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We heard stories of gritty reality, stories illustrating failure, communicating learning and acting as a warning.? As we looked at these stories we asked ourselves a question - could there be a simple, sensible way of organizing and classifying stories that could be useful in helping organizations to live their brand, find alignment, discover new actions, look beyond language?? The Story Plotter emerged from this inquiry. We identified three kinds of stories and designed it as a tool to help organizations and brands do the following:

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1. Talk about who they are by telling stories of what they do
2. Make employees and customers feel heard by incorporating their stories into their communications
3. Create meaning and belonging within an organization
4. Aligning their values with their actions and thus demonstrate authenticity
5. Effectively communicate their brand and build stronger connections with more customers?
6. Transmit their culture, especially to new hires

A Story of Fact: Walking the Talk of Customer Service

Once we were working with a large group of managers at a global overnight shipping and delivery company. They were talking about excellent customer service. When asked what that meant a few people recited the tagline on their brochure. But when asked to tell a story of this language in action a woman in the back of the room grabbed the microphone and told this story:

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“I work in the Rocky Mountain region. One of our carriers responded to a pick up call halfway up the mountain in a remote area. There was an author who was working in one of the cabins who needed his manuscript to get to New York the next day. The driver arrived just as a typical Rocky Mountain snowstorm was assaulting the cabin. Indeed when he tried to start his truck in the cabin driveway after picking up the package from the author he discovered that his truck was quite stuck. The driver calmly looked at the author and asked, “What is your shoe size?” The author replied “9.” The driver then asked if the author had any skis. He squeezed his 9.5 feet into the author’s downhill skis and skied the package down the hill to the road, hitched to the HUB and had it delivered on time the next day”

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This story was news to most of the people in the audience, and someone on the other side of the room even stood up and said, “ We did that?! fantastic!”

This woman’s story got us thinking, What other stories were embedded in the company? After some sleuthing three types of stories emerged:?

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Stories of Fact?

These are stories of things that have actually happened (even if they have been embellished in the telling).? These stories capture actions that flesh out and make real whatever language the company uses to describe itself.? For example, we met Joyce Rogge, a very senior manager at SouthWest Airlines. She will go to an airport gate and run a competition to find the passenger with the biggest hole in their sock. The winner gets free tickets.

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This tells you SouthWest Airlines really does have a sense of humor, as they claim to.

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Stories of Contradiction?

By contrast, these stories capture actions that contradict or work against what the organization says it is.? A manager at a large U.K. mobile phone company recently told us a story of a contradiction that had him wringing his hands in embarrassment.? Whilst holding on a customer service line there was the ubiquitous recording saying ‘please stay on the line, your call is very important to us’.? “I couldn’t believe we were putting that out” he said, “it’s so completely NOT us”.

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Stories of contradiction point out areas of inconsistency and make them visible. They do not always lead to reversible action. The NBA team we worked with wanted to live the value of being more open. However, they had no desire to reveal their draft considerations. They knew this contradicted their stated values and decided that they were fine and made good business sense.

Stories of Possibility?

This is where brands explore and play with the future. We ask a lot of ‘What if…” questions. Ideas for new actions and possible futures spring to the forefront. Stories of possibility are ‘quick wins’, they capture actions that really ought to be happening and for some reason (possibly trivial), aren’t. By asking people to create new stories of possibility, you can find the cheap and easy things that are obvious to somebody in the organization but that no one has yet put into action. Here is an example:

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The baggage handlers at American Airlines noticed something obvious, but something that no one had yet realized, and that was that the bags that go into the plane first are the last to come out of the hold. The handlers suggested that the first class bags be put in last so the first class passengers could get their bags first upon arrival. The company implemented the idea immediately

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A Story of Fact: Walking The Talk of Authenticity

While waiting for luggage at the Phoenix airport, one of On Your Feet team members wrote to us about an encounter? they had. This story inspired our quest to find more stories of alignment, examples of individuals, organizations and brands that were exemplifying their language with action. Here is what he sent us from Phoenix:

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I was waiting for my watching the empty carousel go around, suddenly I hear a “clunk” behind me and turned around to see a large surfboard being unloaded at the oversized baggage area.? My interest peaked, a surfboard being unloaded in a landlocked desert state? A gray haired older gentleman in a suit walked up to claim the oblong baggage and I asked him what he was doing with the surfboard.? He smiled at me and answered in a thick Australian accent, “ oh mate, not sure where I’ll surf but I’ll find some place….have to… it’s in my contract”. He went on to explain that he was the COF of an Australian surfboard company and it is written into every senior executives contract that they must surf at least once a month. This gentleman was on a three-week business trip so he took his board.

Conclusion

The Story Plotter provides a framework within which stories can be told and gathered to help an organization live its brand more effectively.? It can be used to help people in different places, departments or roles, understand what the brand means and how it affects them.? By hearing and telling stories they can translate whatever language is used to describe the brand into action and behavior, including their own.? Stories are not prescriptive or patronizing, they can be interpreted by individuals in their own context.? And by using a grid we give structure to the stories.? This structure gives guidance and form to what would otherwise just be seen as anecdotes of incidental importance.? It thus helps both the individuals and the organization to learn, improve, and communicate through action.???

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Our organization, On Your Feet (www.oyf.com) uses the improv stage as a lab for exploring how actions communicate objectives, desires, values, purpose, and beliefs. In our work we get a glimpse of an organization’s culture, norms, and behavior (our clients include Nike, Intel, Disney, Uber, Google and others).?